Howdy peeps and welcome to Day #9 of Month of Nostalgic Video Game Reviews 2! This is a blog series where I review video games from my childhood. I know we’re again but I swear I’ll get on top of this soon! Anyways today’s game is one that I loved and hated with equal amounts in my childhood days on my Game Boy, so with that in mind let’s talk about Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for Game Boy!

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coinswas released for the Game Boy in Japan and the United States in 1992, while it debuted in Europe in 1993. This game a sequel to Super Mario Land, it features reworked visuals and gameplay from its predecessor and the plot involved Mario trying to reclaim his castle after it is stolen by the antagonist Wario (making his debut appearance). There’s a magical seal that Wario placed on the castle entrance can only be undone by collecting the six Golden Coins, which are guarded by Wario’s henchmen in various locales of the game’s setting, Mario Land. Mario’s quest thus revolves around retrieving each of the golden coins in order to regain access to his castle and defeat Wario.

Like other Mario games the objective is to reach the end of each level, defeating or avoiding enemies while doing so. Enemies come in old and new varieties and can be defeated by jumping on them or using other methods like using a fireball. Warp Pipes return in this game allowing you find hidden areas or shortcuts, coins, and question mark blocks. Unlike in previous Mario games, coins are not used to get lives; instead, they are used to play games in a special area that awards lives and other power-ups. To gain lives, the player must find hearts like they did in the original. After killing 100 enemies, a star comes down and gives you temporary invincibility. The star can also be found at other places in the game. While being invincible, the 5th and each subsequent enemy killed will provide one life.

There are several different themed zones along with secret levels that can only be accessed by finding alternative exits found in regular levels. Each zone has its own boss, which must be defeated to get one of the 6 Coins. If the player loses all of Mario’s lives, all of the 6 Coins are returned to the bosses, which must be defeated again to retrieve the coins. At the end of a level, there is a door that must be touched to clear a level. In addition, there is also a bell above the door which, if touched, activates a mini-game where the player can try to get either a power-up or 1-ups. All levels can be replayed at any time.

Yes Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, now this is what I am talking about! Along with Pokemon Red, Silver and Mario & Yoshi this game was one game I played practically all the time. This was one of my favourite games. I loved everything from the gameplay to the graphics and music too. After playing Super Mario Land for so long moving to this game was such an upgrade and it was SO MUCH BETTER than the last game. I loved how it looked and felt a lot more in line with Super Mario World on the SNES. My favourite power-up in this game was the bunny hood, I abused that so much, just having the ability to hover all over the place was great. Plus the hat looked great on Mario haha. I replayed so many levels and beat this game several times… on Easy Mode. Yes I used the Easy Mode but that was only for finishing the main castle, everything was done normally. I think I beat the game on Normal difficulty at least once before though. But yeah I loved this game, the visuals were great and the music, ah, the music was so crazy, loud and funky but very catchy and memorable. Also coming across Wario in this game for the first time was scary, seeing him in silhouette running up and down the castle, that was super creepy. And when you actually fight the guy, he looks big and dumb but also very demented and scary.

So to conclude Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coinswas a fabulous game on the Game Boy which really was a much better game than it’s predecessor thanks to inspiration from the Mario console games that were out at the time. It is a little on the easy side and some argue that it’s not as great as some make it out to be, but for me this is nostalgic goodness that no fan of Mario should miss out on. 😀

Well there’s another game review done only 21 more to go! So we’ve tackled Super Mario Land 1 & 2, I guess we should continue and finish it off with the final game in the trilogy, so come back tomorrow and we’ll tackle the next one. If you have experiences with this game or any of the following ones do comment below! 😀